If you’ve read this blog for a while – I am shocked by the fact that I’ve owned this domain for almost twenty years, just quietly – then you’ll know that I’m something of a fan of a bit of period neck-stabbing action. You know, the Assassin’s Creed series, aka Ubisoft’s procession of Conspiracy Woo and Historical Shoulder-Charging Simulator games.

Undead Nefertiti is, unsurprisingly, METAL AS FUCK.

At one point, I played all of the games in a row on my PS3 – from the first up to the then-new(ish – I have a backlog) AC IV: Black Flag. I had a bit of a break then, because there’s only so much assassination you can stand in a row. But, like everyone else, I was pretty solid on the fact that the second game and Black Flag were pretty much tied for the title of favourite.

That was until I got my hidden blade into Origins. Or, rather, it got its talons into me.

It’s not logical, really, that someone in search of some light graphic novel reading should end up reading a book about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. You know, the guy who killed men and had sex with them. The Milwaukee Monster.

This guy. Yeah, you know the one. Somehow, I ended up thinking that reading something written by one of his friends was A Thing To Do in place of, I dunno, reading about muscled science freaks with superpowers. (more…)

Like a lot of people, I first came to this book because of the film of the same title. That film – though different in some ways to the book – is a classic of weird UK cinema, featuring Richard Burton as a suitably bitchy novelist with a catastrophic chip on his shoulder. Suffice it to say, I was intrigued enough to find a copy of the book to see how much it differed.

It’s been a while since I wrote something about what I’ve been playing. I know, world with bated breath and all that. I ploughed through a bunch of games in a row until the actual half-arsed reviewing I do had added up to a sizeable amount, and not doing it seemed to encourage more stress than actually sitting down and giving it a go.

Hard at work. Also, bein’ green.

So here, however belated, is my Examination Of What I’ve Been Playing Lately. I would’ve had it done earlier, but the cat ate my homework. (more…)

So. The final volume of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira has rolled around on supercharged wheels. It’s carrying some kind of monster thing that I think was a kid once. There’s carpet bombing and from-orbit lasers. There’s annihilation and birth; grotesqueries of form and the simplicity of connection. There’s death, and there’s life.

There’s also a fair chance that for a reasonable part of the work, it’ll feel like you have no idea what the fuck is going on. But that’s ok, because the ending to this tale of conspiratorial struggles to contain universe-warping power really wants to remind you of one thing: everything comes down to the friends you make along the way.

So here we are, the penultimate Akira trade. Though there’s plenty of action, it can reasonably be said that this is the calm before the storm. Characters reappear and regroup, and the progression of both political jockeying and methods of government contingency ‘management’ is marked.

BUT. There’s still a lot of batshittery in here. I mean, did you ever gather in an arena with your raggedy-arse compatriots to watch the moon explode? Well?

Remember ole H.P. Lovecraft? He’s the guy who’s incredibly influential – cosmic horror as we know it really came about because of him – despite being a faintly awful writer. I mean it: I dig a lot of his work, but his writing is stilted and often ludicrous.

The worst mistake you can make, Kroeber taught, is to see another person through the lens of your prejudices. And the second-worst mistake is to think you aren’t looking through the lens of your prejudices.

As befits a misanthropic nihilist, he was also pretty mad racist – and not a lover of jazz – though to mention this seems to attract its fair share of pitchforks. (This is a pretty great article, now deleted, about the topic.) (more…)

I know, I know. Only four stars. But it’s a classic! But it’s important! But it’s stuck around a lot longer than you have!

All of these things are true. And it’s really difficult to think of many reasons to not give the thing five stars, because when it comes to widescreen stories, Homeric narration is pretty much in a league of its own.

But.

The Iliad is, for all its importance, still something that would, if written in straight prose today, be interesting, but also strongly in need of an edit.